Discussion
Twenty five years ago today I started the #Safari and #WebKit projects at #Apple Computer.
Which means Safari is now old enough to rent itself a car. But let's not speculate about my age.
I'm still sad I can't use Safari on my Windows PC. Alas, I lost the battle to keep it there. But at least WebKit's DNA seeded or influenced most browsers we use today.
And I'm proud of that impact. Along with the wonderful team I built who made it all happen. Here's to another 25, friends.
Cheers. 🥂😊💖
@lisamelton Safari has been my primary browser since day 1. I love it.
@lisamelton Congratulations for the aniverasary!
Safari has been my main browser since its initial release, and Vienna (that I contribute to maintain) would not exist without WebKit.
Thank you—thank you so much.
@lisamelton Do you remember the details about how Apple shipped Windows software? I vaguely recall it involved cherry-picking bits of Yellow Box from NeXTSTEP (for the Cocoa runtime I suppose?), but my recent research into old Mac APIs revealed to me that QuickTime API for Windows implemented a huge portion of the old classic Macintosh toolbox
@rezmason No, I don't remember the runtime details. And I believe they were different for various Apple Windows apps.
@lisamelton I used Safari on Windows (I think Vista) as long as it was available and loved it. Ended up switching to the Mac a couple years later.
@lisamelton I legit miss Safari for Windows. There was a brief span of time where I used Safari everywhere, and I remember it was quite nice.
@lisamelton cheers! Hell of an achievement
@lisamelton Did Safari start out on MacOS X?
@lopta Safari, yes. It was never on the original System-7-style OS.
However, the engine we started with, KHTML+KJS, started out on Linux. We ported that to macOS and it became the basis of WebKit.
@lisamelton I seem to remember Netscape Navigator and perhaps NCSA Mosaic on classic Mac System. Any challenges porting from Linux to Darwin or MacOS?
@lopta Porting was surprisingly easy, albeit a bit tedious. We had to create API shims for all the Qt library calls used in the KDE code. Which we later replaced completely once we had it up and running.
@lisamelton Thanks for your work, Lisa! I have fond memories of using Safari when Firefox on Mac was a slow mess, and installing Safari on Windows too. Today still prefer Safari with normal WebKit over Chromium, it's just better. For many years, I was hoping WebKit would even become part of GNUstep, however the ObjC++ was a barrier 😅
@lisamelton
And #WebKit was seeded by #KHTML from the #KDE project. That should not be ignored or kept under wraps!
@lisamelton oh hey somebody oughta link this post to the “citation needed” tag on the same fact in wikipedia <3
@lisamelton thank you so much for safari! It’s my favourite browser!
@lisamelton happy anniversary!
++ epiphany runs at least on wsl 😉 so yes, you are able to run webkit on Windows. 
is there even a webkit browser for windows in general? here on linux, we have at least GNOME web a.k.a epiphany
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